


Further on Up the Road

by likeadeuce



Series: Faith/Wesley road trip series [1]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 06:39:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce





	1. Blood and Gold

Before sunrise, Wesley's thirty-fourth birthday. Two weeks after his coming to Wolfram and Hart. Four days since Sunnydale collapsing into a crater. Faith stands in his doorway, holding a gun.

"Faith." Wesley backs away, spreads his hands, wonders how he could ever answer a knock without a weapon, except that he's still in his nightclothes and part of him has hoped Fred or Gunn or Angel might be stopping by to wish him well. "Be reasonable, Faith," he says. Repeating the adversary's name as often as possible. This is the only thing he can remember from the Academy unit on hostage negotiation. "This isn't the answer."

"Chill, Wes, it's not loaded." Faith keeps her hand on the muzzle and flips the grip toward him. "Happy birthday." She breezes inside.

Wesley doesn't even know where to start, so he just says her name again -- "Faith," and then. "It's good to see you're well and. . ." His fingers run over the gleaming gold of the barrel. "Dear God, is this a Desert Eagle?" Israeli-made, .50 caliber. Faith has just given him the Cadillac of handguns. No, fuck General Motors. This is a bloody Lamborghini.

"Don't ask me," Faith answers. "You're Guns &amp; Ammo boy." She shrugs and, although there are plenty of perfectly good chairs in the apartment, pulls herself up to sit on his dining room table. "Took it off a bogus cop tried to do me up Sunnydale way. Thought you might dig it."

"Yes, I. . ." He fingers the weapon greedily, half-scared she might take it back. Faith must be able to read this look, because a playful smile creeps onto her face, and he grabs at the most obvious of a hundred questions. "How did you know it was my birthday?"

"Oh, I just remembered." Faith rolls her neck around, as if working out some stiffness, and he hears her joints crack. "From back in Sunny-D. When I stole your wallet to memorize the credit card numbers, I thought the DOB might help."

"Yes, of course." And it's suddenly clear why he had to spend seven hours on the phone with American Express explaining that he did not shop at The Leather Den, and how Faith, allegedly indigent and nearly homeless, had always managed to dress so sharply. But considering everything that has passed between them, five-year- old identify theft scarcely seems like a blip, and he says, "It's a very nice gun, Faith, but why. . .?"

"Got a tip." She pulls a large stake from her jacket and presses the dull end against her palm. "Nest of vamps on a farm north of Santa Cruz. Teamed up with a gang of Fyarl demons, which that thing can actually kill." She points at the gun, then smiles. "I don't need any girl-power-happy Slayerlings along for the ride. But I might could use a Watcher with an itchy trigger finger."

"Faith," he says again, still feeling a little like a hostage. "I have long ceased to be anyone's Watcher, much less yours."

"Fine," she says. "I could use a rogue demon hunter. You still have the cards?"

"I believe they went up in flames with Angel's first office."

"You still have the bike?"

"Yes, but, Faith. . ."

"Good, I got one, too," and, anticipating his question, "Fell off a truck. If we get on the road now, we can pull an ambush while it's still light. Should all be five by five."

"Faith! Slow down! I need to be at work in an hour. What am I supposed to tell Wolfram &amp; Hart?"

"Tell them I forced you." She grins. "Tell them I had a gun."

*

Five hours on a motorcycle, cruising up the Pacific Coast Highway, is a long time to think about what exactly Faith wants to do with him. Fuck him or cut his throat are his best guesses; maybe both, he's not sure in what order. He doesn't know that he is prepared for either contingency – although making sure he is armed was perhaps her way of reassuring him that he has a chance of surviving the ordeal. He thinks the trip will help him sort things out, but he doesn't end up doing much thinking on the road; there is enough to do trying to keep up with Faith.

Her bike is a little Kawasaki, not as powerful as his Big Dog. But it's mobile, and she knows how to gun it up the winding cliffside roads. She has the bonus, apparently, that comes with lacking any fear of death. Faith weaves in and out of traffic, through fog banks and into the oncoming lanes. Sometimes she turns all the way around and waves at him, yelling taunts that he can't untangle from the sound of the wind and the roar of the motor. But he picks up speed, and when she drives as close to the edge as she possibly can, he races even closer. So he might go off the cliff and be dead any minute, but at least right now, with the wind biting his face, the brilliant sky above and the ocean below, the solid weight of the Eagle strapped to his hip, he has no doubts that he is, at this moment, alive; he can't remember the last time he was so sure of it.

Just past Santa Cruz, Faith pulls off the highway, through an artichoke field to an old wooden barn. They scare some cows, but the vamps never see them coming. After the death-daring ride, the fight is embarrassingly fast. Wesley senses just a little of what young Cassius Clay must have felt, decking Sonny Liston with that phantom punch in '65. Thrilled with the victory, but almost sorry it could be that easy; weeping, like Alexander, that there are no more worlds to conquer.

The highlight reel: Wes nails five Fyarls with three shots. All of Faith's stakes find home, and she tosses him an extra, just so he'll have something to do. Every motion clicks like the choreography of a ballet or a daydream; his mind moves back past his Council training – preparation preparation preparation and tests under controlled circumstances – to his boyish imaginings. Before Quentin Travers tried to train all the bloodlust of him, the boy Wesley imagined fighting beside a Slayer, in the field. The way his Father did, all those years ago, in New Zealand. But now, when they are finished, when the last vampire swirls into dust, Faith lets out a war whoop and jumps onto him, arms around his neck, and legs around his waist. And that was no part of his eight-year-old daydreams. He hopes she will think the hardness against her hip is his gun; then he hopes she won't; then he doesn't know what he hopes, until she laughs and jumps down and runs into the sunlight. She guns the bike, yells, "Come on, you slow old man!" And now he knows what he wants: to follow her.

They speed to the highway, and he readies to race back to L.A. But she turns right instead – north, up the coast, and he follows, no longer knowing where she leads, surrendering his care for anything but the chase. She turns inland at San Gregorio, and in Woodside they stop to fill their tanks, and Faith's stomach, at a two gas-pump diner in the shade of the redwoods. Faith inhales a stack of pancakes and sausage links. Wes is starving but insists that he isn't; he is almost out of cash after buying the gas, and he's quite sure nothing he swallows will survive twenty minutes on the bike. Faith ignores his protests, orders him a slice of apple pie with ice cream, and demands a birthday candle. The waitress rolls her eyes, and when she leaves, Faith says: "Fuck that shit. Wait three minutes and follow me out back."

On her way to the restroom, she stops at the juke box, and puts in a lot of quarters – surely, more than the value of the meal. Wes has never skipped out on a check before, but he can't feel too bad about it, since he hasn't actually eaten anything. It's not as though he bears any real responsibility for Faith.

He meets her in the back, and as they power up the bikes, he has to ask:"What did you put on the stereo?"

"Neil Young song about a dead dog. Let Old Lady Rolls-her-eyes listen to that seventeen times in a row. I mean, props to Neil. Zuma rocks, and Harvest,but that 'Old King' song is the worst shit ever."

*

She veers west again, toward the coast, and just before sunset they stop at an old light house on a promontory north of Half Moon Bay. A sign identifies it as a "Youth Hostel." Faith pays the minimal fee – he decides not to think about where she got the cash -- and signs them in as Mr. &amp; Mrs. Smith. Wes wonders if he looks like a man transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes, but no one seems to question or care. Well, California is a large state, and he doesn't bother to feel guilty, because she is an adult, probably, and he has no idea what his purposes are. Moral or otherwise.

The beds all stand together, in a dorm, with a couple large communal bathrooms. Wesley goes to sponge the ash and smog off his body and change into the extra shirt he thought to bring. He still hasn't eaten, so he gets a beef jerky and a Snickers bar from the vending machine. When he comes back, Faith is making small talk with some hikers. She nods at him, but says nothing. He hangs in the background, feeling her youth and American-ness, envying her a little of both.

When her companions start to turn in, Wesley asks if she's thought about sleeping arrangements.

"Sleep?" Faith raises an eyebrow, "Don't be a pussy. Race you to the beach."

Faith scrambles down the rocky hillside. When she finally stops to let him catch her, Wes asks, "Why did you want to stop here if we're not going to sleep?"

She reaches in the pocket of her jacket and slips out a small gold pipe and a bag of brow flaky leaves. "What these wannabe hippie hitchhiker kids lack in loss-prevention skills, they make up in weed."

"Faith," he says, the negotiator voice again. "I am not going to sit on the beach and smoke stolen marijuana with you." Except that in a few minutes, that's exactly what he's doing. And soon after that, she lies on her back, in the sand, and her hair is dirty with seaweed, and his knee digs into gravel. They open their jeans just enough for him to push into her, for her to take him. And all that thinking he meant to do, about what she wants and what he wants? He still hasn't gotten around to the thinking; now, they are only doing. Part of him feels very wrong and much of him feels very right, but mostly it is enough that he feels.

When they are done, she says, "Wes," and he says, "Faith," and he rolls off her, onto the sand and rocks and starfish, and they lie together, looking at the sky.

"Man," she says, "This beach kind of reeks, huh?" They both laugh and they say they want to smoke another bowl. But then they fall asleep, right there, limbs jumbled together, under the stars, prey for any human or demon predator that comes along. They wake up in the morning to the rays of another sunrise. And they climb the hill. And they keep riding north.


	2. The Last Good Kiss

You might come here Sunday on a whim.  
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss  
you had was years ago. You walk these streets  
laid out by the insane, past hotels  
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try  
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.  
-Richard Hugo, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg,  
quoted by James Crumley as an epigraph to The Last Good Kiss

 

Faith leads the way north from Half Moon Bay, up the highway through a fog bank. They're riding blind, and Wesley is still ravenous. He half-wonders if what happened between them last night was some side effect of extreme hunger. Then he thinks that eating might jog him back into sanity, and he isn't sure he wants that. Sanity would tell him to turn around and go back to L.A. and walk into work, side-by-side with Angel, for the organization that has spent the last four years trying to destroy them and. . .all right, maybe sanity wouldn't say that. He wonders if he would actually recognize a sane notion if he had one. Now, following Faith? Clearly nuts. And it feels so damn good.

She pulls off in a town called Pacifica and stops at another diner. He's starting to notice a pattern. Her tastes don't exactly run to haute cuisine, but then there is the thing where he is ravenous. Both of them eat about three meals worth of food, without saying much, and when the check comes, Faith nods at the back door. Wesley takes out his wallet. "Why don't we do something novel and pay?" He sets a credit card on top of the sales slip, then says drily, "Unless you just want to tell them the numbers. I assume you still remember."

"Ooooh," Faith says, ignoring the dig at her larcenous habits. "I always figured you for a guy would buy a girl breakfast the next morning." She leans over closer to him and mouths, "Classy."

"Faith. . ." Wes feels the heat rise to his face as he moves back from her.

"S'okay, Wes. This doesn't mean we're gonna have to talk about it." She cracks her knuckles. "Slaying makes me hungry and horny. Always been that way. You were convenient." He gives her a curious look and she laughs. "Now, admit it, Wes. You thought you were gonna wake up with your head chewed off like a praying mantis."

"I certainly did not," he chokes out, indignantly. "Although," he adds, "if I ever did meet a woman who seemed likely to engage in post-coital cannibalism. . ." Leaning closer to her, he murmurs, "Well, I already cut her head off."

"You?" Faith looks at him like she's waiting for the punchline.

"Though, only, I must emphasize, after she was already dead. By the hand of . . .one or the other of my two closest friends. Acting under demonic influence, of course, but. . .I'm fuzzy on the details."

Faith gives him a long look and says, "So you're not that easy to shock these days. That's what you're saying? A little no-blanket beach bingo isn't going to do it."

"No," says Wesley, "It doesn't have to mean anything."

"No," she says. "But I'll tell you what it does mean." She touches his sleeve, then lowers his hand to the leg of her jeans. "These clothes are rank."

*

There's a dollar store up the road from the diner, and Wesley buys them both jeans, fresh T-shirts and clean underwear, anything that doesn't smell like seawater and pot and sex. They change in the restroom, and drop most of their old clothes in a dumpster. They're walking back to the bikes, and Faith stops at a thrift store window to lust after a pair of Harley-Davidson motorcycle boots, still in great shape. She grins up at him. "It's my birthday?"

"What a coincidence! Mine was yesterday." His eyes narrow. "Really?"

She shrugs. "Well, it could be. I'd need one of those snazzy birth certificates for that shit, and my honey of a mom always thought we should stay out of the system."

"June first," he said. "Good a day as any. Besides," he rationalizes. "Those boots are functional."

"Functia-what?" she says. "No, fuck that, man. Those are gonna be my lucky boots." She leans close, and winds a foot around the back of his calf. "If you distract the guy," she says. "I can get out of here with those and . . . Hmm, maybe I should distract the guy?"

He puts a hand on her shoulder. "I've got it." She gives him a strange half-frown, whether it's over the hand or the offer, he doesn't know. "Happy birthday, Faith." And once again, Wesley's American Express is buying leather for her.

On the way out, they pass a used bookstore. Wesley's eyes travel that way by instinct. "Go ahead, library guy," she mocks. "I'll stand guard. I'm kind of allergic to those places. Too much like school or, you know. Prison."

"Really, Faith." Wesley says, and he hears the Watcher coming out in spite of himself. "All the wealth of human knowledge and you can't find a thing that interests you?"

"Jesus," she answers, "You sound just like the last guy, and he was a high school principal."

"If you promise to come in here with me?" he says. "I promise not to ask about that."

She rolls her eyes, but trudges in behind him. He goes straight for rare editions, and she starts to walk out again.

"Wait." He pulls her towards paperbacks. "Look, I bet I can find something you want. Give me – give me one sentence, all right? How about. . ." He pulls out a dog-eared copy of On the Road. "A classic, and quite appropriate."

"OK," she warns, "If you're gonna turn into Xander Harris on me, this is over."

"I suppose Kerouac is a little cliché." He decides not to try and process the meaning of her 'this', just runs his finger down the shelf. "Chandler, too urban; Fitzgerald, too Hollywood; Hemingway, just too – too. Dear Lord, have they never heard of alphabetization in this country and. . . Now there's a thought." He flips a paperback off the shelf and hands it to her.

She reads from the cover. "The Last Good Kiss?" Her look says that this is it, he's finally cracked; like the kid in The Princess Bride, she's not going to read any damn kissing book.

"Just read the first sentence," he says.

Faith shrugs, but she opens it, and bends back the cover. Her eyes move along the page, and then she laughs out loud. "An alcoholic bulldog?" She looks up. "This is in a book? A book that you've read? I thought they'd be more about tea parties and shit." Flipping it over to look at the price tag, she says, "I guess if you want to add a buck-fifty to my birthday present."

"That's the spirit," he says, and she actually stands there and reads, while he browses some more. Wesley pretends to be shopping for himself, but he's really diving into territory he hasn't explored since early adolescence. Jim Thompson and James Cain, Richard Stark's Parker books and some early Elmore Leonard. Stories about beautiful losers, wandering the vast mysterious space of America; under-the-covers reading when he was at school, as impossible and distant as science fiction, then, and considerably moreso, for a budding Watcher, than most of what was passed off as fantasy. He can't even remember which of these he's read, and he wouldn't mind looking them over again, to see how they've aged. But mostly he can imagine handing them off to Faith, one by one; he can see her mainlining prose like heroin.

And suddenly he realizes that he's thinking about giving her these books, not just tonight but tomorrow and next week and next month and as long as he can keep it up, and there is absolutely no way in hell that either of them is going back to Los Angeles, not any time soon.

*  
It is time to tell Angel. They stop at a coffee shop across from the post office, and Wesley uses his credit card to make a call from the pay phone. He explains the circumstances, as well as he can understand them himself, ending with, "I feel that perhaps I was too hasty in accepting that position in the –" he starts to say 'occult' but there are people in the dining room and he switches to –"research division. And since I got the impression that the offer was largely directed at you, perhaps it's not too late."

Angel's end of the line is quiet, and finally he saus, "So you'd rather work as a field agent. I'm sure the firm can arrange. . ."

"No," Wesley is quiet but implacable. "I think that, at this point, I'd like to have no affiliation with Wolfram &amp; Hart. If, I mean – if you can spare me."

Wesley waits, and Angel wouldn't even need to say 'no.' He only needs to hesitate, to express the smallest doubt, and Wes will walk away from Faith, from whatever this is and whatever it might become, just as he walked away from Lilah. He sees Faith's eyes, and he knows that she knows.

"Yeah, Wes," says Angel. "I think that's probably for the best." For a moment, it feels like a gutpunch, but then Angel goes on, and Wes thinks that he detects a note of envy in his old friend's voice. "Somebody needs to be out there fighting the good fight." He pauses, then says. "You and Faith? Is this a Slayer-Watcher thing? You're going back to the Council?"

"I am no longer Faith's Watcher," he answers, and lets that mean what it means.

He hands the phone off to Faith, who laughs as she seems to be answering questions. "Yuh-huh. Yuh-huh. Yup. How's Wes?" She looks at him. "Oh, you know. Lots of stamina. But he hogs the covers." For a moment, she has to hold the phone away from her ear, and then she yells, "Of COURSE I'm kidding." Then, quieter, "There were no covers." Another moment. "As serious as you want me to be. . .Yes, I understand why you took the offer. I mean, it's batshit crazy, but I understand. You've been through crazy and come out on the other side. Wes? Six months in that place and he'll be locked in the office talking to himself. He needs a change of scene, that's all. I'll get him back in one piece." Listening again. "OK, sure. I'll tell him." She hangs up, and looks at Wesley. "We're meeting Gunn and Lorne tomorrow, in Reno. They'll bring us some things."

*

In San Francisco, they get a room in another cheap hostel, but this time they curl up together and just sleep, for twelve hours straight. At least, Wesley does, though when he wakes up, she's beside him, reading, though she tries to pretend like she wasn't. Over breakfast, she declares that her bike sucks, and they should both ride his to Nevada, then figure it out from there. So they go to Golden Gate Park, and she sells the rice-burner for three-hundred bucks, plus a hundred-dollar bag of what a kid who calls himself Yogi refers to as "some seriously dank shit." Wesley feels weird about seeing drugs sold, more or less in public, but considering the extremely unlicensed Israeli handgun concealed under his jacket, he doesn't have much room to talk. Besides, hard-boiled pulp fiction and sex on the beach aren't the only adolescent tastes that Faith has managed to resurrect in him.

They walk back to the Big Dog, parked up on Haight Street, and Wesley tries to climb onto the front. "Hey!" Faith protests. "I'm nobody's bitch."

"It's my bike!" he gripes.

"And you ride like my dead gramma, and I'd like to get to Reno before the next Apocalypse."

And so he gets behind her, and fastens his hands around her waist, and pushes his chest against her back and she settles between his legs and he knows there is absolutely no way they are getting to Nevada without stopping to shag. And he's right. A one-seat restroom in a truck stop north of Dixon gets the honor. The rest of the way, Faith rides on the back.

*

They meet Lorne and Gunn in a parking lot, and even though it should be friendly, Wes has the odd feeling of a prisoner exchange. Lorne drives up in an SUV, while Gunn has brought Angel's old convertible, with everything Wes said he would need – a bag of clothes, a few of his books, a small laptop, and the cell phone he ran off without. Gunn also has some things for Faith: a driver's license and Canadian passport, identifying her as Bianca Savage, born in 1979 in Victoria, British Columbia. Faith the wanted fugitive is no more -- if she ever was, in a legal sense. Gunn also gives both of them his card, with the Wolfram &amp; Hart logo. Lots of copies. "Don't abuse this or nothin'," he says, with a glance at Faith. "But let's just call it, Get out of Jail Free."

Lorne is uncharacteristically quiet, but looks from Wes to Faith intently. Wes can't get away from the uncomfortable feeling that his aura is being read. He doesn't like the idea, but on the other hand, he is pretty damn curious about what it would say. Wesley, as usual, feels like the last one to know anything about Wesley.

Gunn gestures for him to come to one side, and Lorne suddenly starts babbling to Faith. "Honey, you just have to tell me about those boots, and can I just say? It's not every girl who can pull off a motorcycle helmet and have her hair look that good." Wes is vaguely aware that this is some sort of distraction that Lorne and Gunn have planned.

"Is he trying to read her?" Wesley asks, craning to see past Gunn. "I think the chances of Faith bursting into song are. . ."

"Hey, English!" Gunn claps his hands, and Wes turns to him. "This is gonna be good-bye for us for a while, least you can do is look at me. Be honest, you and Faith. This is really what you want?"

Wesley has to hold back a laugh. "Are you asking if she abducted me? Is that what Angel thinks?"

"I'm asking why you changed your mind. Is it some Slayer/Watcher thing I'm not gonna get?"

"I haven't been a Watcher for a long time. You know that." He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, wanting to give Gunn something and so almost telling him what he couldn't say to Angel. "And I'm quite certain that you can get what kind of thing this is."

"You and Faith? Faith and you?" Gunn frowns and leans close. "Wes, man. . .didn't she try to kill you?"

Wes manages a smile. "You do remember my last girlfriend, right?"

"I haven't been a lawyer very long," Gunn says, "But I do know there are some precedents you don't cite when you want to help your own case."

"Lilah being one?" Wes sighs. "Faith's all right, Charles. Angel would be the first one to tell you that. But Faith's not the reason. I'm doing what I need to do. Just . . .look out for the others."

"You mean Fred," says Gunn flatly.

"I mean the others. Angel. Cordelia. And of course." He shakes his head, but doesn't say the name. "Her. And don't mention. . .what I said about Faith. It's not as though I'm expecting it to last forever. Or at all. But that doesn't mean I'll be back there with my tail between my legs. Just tell them I'm sorry. Tell them I couldn't do it. I'm not trying to prove I'm better than anyone, but I've been deep in the belly of that beast and. . ." He smiles. "Faith seems to think this is some sort of therapy."

Gunn glances her way. "You're taking mental-health suggestions from Faith now?" And smiles creep across both their faces, and then they move back toward the others. Gunn puts out his fist, and Wes meets it, so that they touch skin at the knuckles.

"Stay strong," says Wes.

"Be well," says Gunn.

"Don't let the bastards grind you down," Wes answers.

They start to move apart, and then Lorne comes in and presses them together with a hug. "We'll miss your crazy pretty face around the big glass house."

"Thank you," Wesley sputters. He manages to escape the demon's embrace, and starts rubbing off his jacket, looking anywhere but at the other men. Which leads to looking at Faith, who is grinning in amusement.

"Ease off, man," Gunn says to Lorne. "I ain't goin' anywhere, and we have to drive back to L.A. together."

"Drive together?" Wes says with a frown.

Lorne points at his face, "The FAA ain't exactly crazy about putting me on a plane. I call it species profiling, and I was trying to get Legal Eagle here on a civil rights case."

"And I told him, 'demon' is not a protected class under Title Seven," Gunn says wearily. "Many times," he adds, then tosses a set of keys to Wesley. "I took a last spin in the Plymouth, Lorne's driving me back.

Faith is the first to get it. "Angel's giving us his car?"

"Gunn, we can't take this!" Wesley protests. Faith smacks him on the arm, and maybe she forgets how hard a Slayer can hit, though maybe she doesn't.

"Angel won't take no for an answer," says Gunn. "Believe me, 'cause I wanted this baby. For me. And bad. But the firm gave him more cars than you can shake a stake at. And Angel said you used to be his wheel man, back in the day,so he liked the idea of the old baby getting its share of action on the open road."

Before Wesley can say anything else, Faith smacks his arm again, and just for good measure, she takes the keys. Then everyone starts to say good-bye, and they realize it's been said, so Lorne and Gunn get in one car, and they drive away.

Faith climbs behind the wheel of the convertible, cackling, "Best birthday present, ever!"

"I thought we decided that was yesterday." Wesley speaks absently, looking after the others. Something is emptying out inside of him, but it isn't exactly sad; it's both a loss and a lightening. It isn't that he will never see Gunn again. If life has showed him anything, it is that you can hardly ever count on anyone being gone for good. Yet, he stands here and it is entirely possible that he might never see Gunn again, and that, if they don't, it may be all right, because everything that needs to happen between them has happened already. The story that binds them together is not so much over as complete. They might very well meet again, but it will be the start of a new chapter.

"Hey Wes," Faith says softly. He turns to her, half bewildered. "You know what I'm thinking?" And, when he shakes his head 'no.' I'm thinking you should get on that bike, and I should drive this car, and we should get a real hotel room. And then we should fuck our brains out." She smiles. "How does that sound?"

He smiles, and starts to speak, and she warns, "If you say 'five by five'? I might just have to kick your ass.


	3. Lucky Graveyard Boots

Got my dead man's suit, and my smilin' skull ring/  
My lucky graveyard boots, and a song to sing  
\--Bruce Springsteen, "Further on (Up the Road)" and/or "Maria's Bed"

 

Wesley lay back on the hotel bed and wondered what Faith would do if she came out of the bathroom and found him asleep. Fuck me or cut my throat, he thought. Why not both? His body felt exhausted from a day on the road, a hot June day crossing from California through the mountains to the Nevada desert. Put that with the emotional fallout of saying goodbye to almost everyone and everything that had defined his life for the last four years, and his mind didn't feel so much numb as ragged, as though someone had raked through his brain with a garden fork.

He raised his hand to the flesh of his neck. Maybe the reason you're worried about her cutting your throat is because of the time that she did. Kneading the skin with his fingers, he remembered. That night in the empty room, broken glass in her hand and the crazed look in her eyes.

But that was years ago. Faith had changed. She had a right to change, he certainly had. And besides, she was the only woman who had showed up at his door with a gun the morning he was supposed to go in to a job he didn't really want, and she was the only woman who had looked at him that night and said, Let's go get a real hotel room and fuck .

They'd found a gaudy place on the Reno strip and used Wesley's credit card to book a suite that his raked-over brain wouldn't let him think about how to pay for. So far so good, but once they got in the room, she just gave him enough time to take a piss, then came into the bathroom with an armload of his stuff ("I didn't pack so good") and shoved him out toward the bed with the instruction: "Lie there. Don't move."

And that was forty minutes ago. She shut the door and locked it, and he swore he heard her running a bath. This panicked him a little – she seemed to have taken a shaving kit, and trying slit her own wrists with safety razors was not the least plausible thing he could imagine her doing. But when he rose to knock on the door, she yelled, "I'm five by five. I just figured out how to make a bubble bath with the shampoo. I gotta get all clean before you see me all naked. I'm worth the wait, so keep your pants on!"

Wesley stripped off his jacket, shoes and socks, but he obeyed Faith and stayed in his jeans and T-shirt. It was hot outside and so, as in all American hotel rooms, the air-conditioning was cranked way up; Wesley had never been able to understand this country's obsession with climate control, but after a day on the road, it felt like luxury. He lay back on the thin duvet, wriggled his toes, and stretched hands over his head. This was when he started thinking about sleep. . .oh, sleep. . . but he couldn't really even close his eyes. His contact lenses burned when he tried, and even if Faith didn't have all his toiletries locked in the bathroom with her, he sure as hell wasn't going to miss the visuals on this extravaganza.

They'd had sex twice already -- the first night on the beach, and again that afternoon in a truck stop restroom – but they'd barely gotten out of their clothes either time. It wasn't as though Faith's outfits hid much, but his idea of what she looked like naked was still mostly theoretical.

It was a hell of a nice theory, of course, and as he thought about her round breasts and the soft curve of her hips, he reached down and undid his own jeans and. . .

"You ready out there?" She stuck her face through the crack in the bathroom door.

Wesley's hand froze on his zipper, and he raised his head just enough to catch her eye and say, "No. Why don't you mess around for a couple more hours, while I sit out here and watch World News on the BBC?"

"Have they got to the wicket scores yet?"

"Cricket?" he suggested.

"Whatever." She curled up the edges of her tongue and stuck it out at him. During his last encounter with that tongue, she'd been kneeling in dirty footprints on the wet tile of a restroom floor, while he leaned his back against the wall, and wrapped one hand in the tangled crown of her hair.

Now he gulped and rasped, "Whatever." Still lying down, he reached to finish pulling the pants off his waist.

"Not yet," she scolded. "Stay right how you are. You gotta look at me and you gotta think. Are you with me?"

He rolled on his side and leaned on one elbow. "That depends on where we are."

"You're driving," she said. "Down the road. Are you following?"

"It's complicated, but I'm trying."

Her with the tongue again. He felt the blood surging, below, felt himself hardening, and so he just nodded.

Still talking through the crack in the door, Faith said, "You're driving and you see this girl, holding out her thumb." She stuck her hand out to demonstrate. "So you slow down, and you notice, all she's wearing is. . ." Faith knocked open the door with her shoulder. She strutted out, swinging her hips. Round hips, and her hair tumbling down over small pointed breasts. Small breasts with dark nipples, the rest of her skin vampire pale. Paler even, on the triangle spot between her legs, and he thought Well, I'm throwing out that razor and Maybe it's time to stop shaving again anyway . . . so it did take him a moment to realize what she was wearing. On her feet, the new black motorcycle boots and over her shoulders, shadowed by the curtains of her hair, a leather strap crossing between her breasts and. . .

"Good God, Faith!" He tore his eyes away from her long enough to stare at the chair and his jacket where he swore it should have been. "When did you take my gun?"

She reached the side of the bed, put her hands on the mattress and arched her back. Leaning down, she whispered in his ear, as her hair brushed his shoulder. "When you were looking somewhere else?"

"It's not loaded, is it?" he choked out.

"That depends, cowboy." Her eyes traveled to the open front of his jeans. "Is yours?"

It took him a second to realize that she was back in whatever fantasy they were supposed to be playing.

"I'm sorry, Calamity Jane, but I've lost the storyline. Are you in the car yet?"

"You just pulled up."

"And how long does it take me to notice that you're naked?"

"Is this how you watch porn?" Mimicking his accent – badly, he was glad to note – she said, "I just don't understand why they're gang-banging that poor girl. All she wanted was to order a pizza."

He drew his lips together to hold back a smile and spread a hand to rest on the curve of her thigh. "You're the one who introduced a narrative element. I was simply trying to follow your story. It's fine with me if you just. . ."

"Climb on board?" Faith slid one hand under Wesley's T-shirt and ground a finger into his navel. A tremor ran through him, like an electrical current, and Faith bent her knees, settled one against his hip, and slid the other over to straddle him. She straightened her thighs until she hovered over him.

He moved one hand down to start pulling off his jeans, but she snaked a hand out to grab his wrist. "This ain't no truck stop, cowboy." She pressed one boot against his bare foot, and for a moment he stopped moving. "We've got this room all night."

Wesley nodded and pulled the hand down to his side, lacing his long fingers through hers. Then he moved his other hand between her legs, feeling the bumps of the newly shaven skin, steamed red and raw from the bath. He took the hand that Faith had captured and used it to pull her fingers up and trace the curves of her body. With his other hand, Wesley pressed fingers against her clit then slid inside her, deep. She felt warm and cool at once, and very wet, and he realized she hadn't just been shaving and bathing and changing. She'd put in some kind of lubricant, to smooth things up. The two times before had been fast and hard. After two days on a motorcycle, he bet she hurt like hell. He kept his eyes trained on her face, and thrust his fingers roughly into her. She almost managed to hide the pain, but her eyes widened for a second, and her breath came out in a little gasp. Well good, he thought. She could grease up all she wanted, but she was going to feel him, feel every inch of him, and if she couldn't walk tomorrow, well, she would have found out he could hurt her and they'd be . . .what? Even?

This was ridiculous, there was something wrong with his brain. He jerked his hand out of her and wrapped his fingers, wet with her liquids and whatever else she had put in there, around the leather strap of the holster. He pulled her down so that her body lay pressed against him, her tits grinding into his chest. Her face came to rest against his, and he aimed for her mouth, but she jerked her head, and his lips brushed against her chin.

"No."

"What?"

He put his hand to the back of her head and pushed her down toward him again. "Kiss me," he said.

This made her laugh, the innocence of the request, but she raised her head enough to look him in the eyes and see he was dead earnest. So she pressed her mouth against his, and he opened his lips wide enough that she could push into him with her tongue. He raised his hips so that his erection ground against her crotch. She rocked back and forth, rubbing against his cock at the same time that they shared the taste of what was, despite the fucking and the head they'd given and the two nights they had slept, knotted and twined together, their very first kiss. Tasting her, he thought of Lilah. As much as they had fucked, more times more ways than he could start to number, he could still catalog and count every single time they had kissed. There hadn't been many; she made an art of withholding them. The only thing she ever denied him, and so it turned into a prize, a thing most desired, and. . .

He didn't want to think about Lilah, now, because here was Faith and he felt alive in this moment, discovering the alien taste of her. The warmth, the particular smell, a bit of cigarette smoke, salt and sweetness and mint and. . . He pulled away long enough to murmur, "There were chocolates on the pillow, weren't there, you greedy little minx?" He pressed his mouth against her again and, after a long moment, breathed into her ear, "You stole my gun and my chocolate."

"Otherwise," she snorted, "My breath would probably still taste like your jizz, so. . ." She shook her hand out of his grasp and pulled down his jeans and boxers, stopping only for a second to place a teasing hand on his cock. As soon as he groaned, she moved to pull his shirt off. "I wanted you naked a long time ago. I. . ." Her hand moved up his stomach, fingers gliding softly against his flesh, touch without weight.

And then she stopped. Wes knew what place she had found, more from the look in her eyes than from feeling her hand against it. That skin couldn't feel anymore there, the ugly welt where the bullet had gone in.

Cautiously, he said, "Faith?"

She raised her head, and her dark eyes cut in to him. "This is bullshit," she said, and she started to pull away.

Instinctively, his hands clenched around her arms, to keep her from rising, and the look she turned on him now said, Oh, no, you didn't. "You do remember who you're dealing with, right?"

He knew she could crush him if she wanted to. Possibly even if she didn't want to. Maybe that was what she was reacting to, the evidence of old wounds on his body. "Of course I remember," he answered. "And I have the scars to prove it. However, this. . ." He took her hand and pressed it again to the thick, pale spot in his flesh. "Is not one of yours. In fact, I have enough scars on this body that I doubt I could pick the ones you gave me out of a lineup."

"And that makes it all right?"

"What makes it all right is if we decide it's all right."

"And this is?"

"For the moment."

"For the moment?" She moved her hand down his body. "Why, because you can't trust anything a man says when his dick's hard?"

"Pretty much," he murmured, and, grinding against her, said, "And who the hell wants to talk?".

"So," she pressed her lips against his ears. "How do you want me?" He felt her moving into another role, though he couldn't work out what it was suppposed to be. "I've been a bad girl," she simpered. "Do you want to hurt me?"

"No!" he said. Not liking the game at all, liking the buried truth even less, he spoke too loud, too quickly.

She brought her hand to his neck and moved a finger across, in a cutting motion, and he remembered as he knew she remembered the broken glass cutting into his flesh. "Liar."

He fought the urge to look away, and met her eyes. There was no way to lie to her now. "Maybe you're right," he murmured. "But are we going to pretend like I can?"

Her eyebrows rose, and she sat up, straddling his bare legs. She ran the flat of her hand against his chest. "So how you want me is. . .?"

"On top. Naturally." Recognizing the natural order of things, anyway, he thought. It wouldn't be with them the way it had been with Lilah, a constant struggle for dominance. If Wesley ever ended up on top with Faith, it was going to be because she let him, because they were playing a game where she was a hitchhiker or some kind of pouty sex kitten, and she wasn't that, she'd never be that, she was a warrior and she was stronger but she had asked him along for the ride, him and no one else, and if he needed something to hold onto that was something and maybe she did belong on top and maybe it was time for him to stop pretending that he didn't like it that way. And so Faith took Wesley, and Wesley let her take him.

As for Faith, it made her smile. It made her fucking smile, as she pulled him inside her, a big blazing glorious smile that he didn't imagine she had in her arsenal of sneers and pouts, and at that moment of all the bloody words in all the fucking languages that Wesley knew, it was that overused, never understood line from Keats that ran across his mind, pared down and altered, in his head, to fit for the rhythm of their bodies. Beauty truth. Truth beauty. All you know on earth. All you need to know.


End file.
